I believe that anyone of any age or skill level can write something beautiful and urgent. Over and over I’ve seen students who are new to poetry write something incredible with just a bit of guidance and encouragement towards finding what is already in them. My pedagogy is rooted in an attempt to empower students to feel that they have the right to their own language. American education so often presents rigid, one-size-fits-all notions about writing. This ultimately works to build barriers that limit how we think, see, and act (as Wittgenstein wrote: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world”). Over the last two years, I have been so energized as a college writing instructor working to open up students to new possibilities, encouraging them to treat writing as not simply a place for the expression of a static sense of self, or a place to articulate a predetermined idea in a received form, but to treat writing as the actual field upon which thought and discovery can take place. 

My efforts to make space for different ways of thinking and being are heavily informed by my personal experience of going through the education system as a neurodivergent kid who didn’t get a diagnosis until adulthood and spent a lot of time worrying that they weren’t fit for the world. Furthermore, as a non-binary writer, I had to seek out materials on my own to see myself represented, so I structure my courses with the goal of being as diverse and inclusive as possible with acknowledgement that there is always more to learn. The principles of universal design and anti-racist pedagogy are always important to my work.

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I ground my teaching as much as possible in the act of writing and in the development of writing practices, and I encourage my students to believe that their stories, their experiences, no matter how mundane or banal, are important and worth writing about. We go to the park and write what we see; we write stream of consciousness; we practice looking closely. As a writer and a citizen of the world, I think it is so important to pay attention—to everything: what you read, your thoughts, your senses, the world around you—so I try to teach my students to rise to the central challenge, not just of writing, but of life, to be, as Henry James said, “one of those upon whom nothing is lost.”

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